Three quarters of pregnant women take sick leave from work but employers can help reduce this through flexible work adjustments, a new study suggests.

The study looked at women scheduled to give birth, at the Akershus University Hospital in Norway over an 18 month period and the prevalence of, reasons for and factors associated with sick leave during their pregnancies.

Researchers gathered information via a questionnaire conducted at week 17 and week 32 from a total of 2,918 women, of which 2,197 (or just over 75 percent) received sick leave at some point during their pregnancy.

The study found that women took an average of eight weeks sick leave, ranging from one to 40 weeks, the majority needed between four to 16 weeks.

The factors associated with sick leave varied according to trimester of pregnancy with more women requiring time off as their pregnancies progressed. By week 32, 63 percent of the women were taking sick leave.

Overall 35 percent of women sited fatigue and sleep problems as the main reason for taking sick leave, followed closely by pelvic girdle pain (pain caused by limited mobility and functioning of the pelvis joints) and nausea or vomiting, with 32 percent and 23 percent of women suffering these symptoms respectively.

While very few women (2.1 percent) sited anxiety or depression as a reason for their sick leave, they recorded the longest average of sick leave taken at 20 weeks.

The study also looked at work adjustments for pregnant women and found 60 percent of the 2,197 women reported having adjustments made to their working situation.

On average these women reported taking seven days less sick leave than those who went without job adjustments.

"We found that a large number of pregnant women take time off work as sick leave. The factors associated with sick leave varied according to the trimester of pregnancy but some of these factors are not necessarily caused by pregnancy alone," Dr Signe Dorheim, Division of Psychiatry, Stavanger University Hospital, Norway and co-author of the paper said.

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